Cooper Union - Founding and Early History

Founding and Early History

The Cooper Union was founded in 1859 by American industrialist Peter Cooper, who was a prolific inventor, successful entrepreneur, and one of America's richest businessmen at the time. Peter Cooper was a workingman's son who had less than a year of formal schooling, yet went on to become an industrialist and an inventor; Cooper designed and built America's first steam railroad engine. Cooper later made his fortune with a glue factory and iron foundry. After achieving wealth, he turned his entrepreneurial skills to successful ventures in real estate, insurance, railroads and telegraphy. He once ran for President under the Greenback Party, becoming the oldest person ever nominated for the presidential election.

In the late 1850s, when Cooper was a principal investor and first president of the New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Co., the firm undertook one of the 19th century's monumental technical enterprises—laying the first Transatlantic cable. Cooper also invented instant gelatin, with help from his wife, Sarah, who added fruit to what the world would come to know as Jell-O.

Peter Cooper's dream was to give talented young people the one privilege he lacked: a good education. He also wished to make possible the development of talent that otherwise would have gone undiscovered. To achieve these lofty goals, Cooper designated the majority of his wealth, primarily in the form of real estate holdings, to the creation and funding of The Cooper Union, a zero-tuition school with courses made freely available to any applicant. Discrimination based on race, religion, or sex was expressly prohibited.

Originally intended to be named simply "the Union," the Cooper Union began with adult education in night classes on the subjects of applied sciences and architectural drawing, as well as day classes primarily intended for women on the subjects of photography, telegraphy, typewriting and shorthand in what was called the College's Female School of Design. Initial board members included Horace Greeley and William Cullen Bryant, and early alumni included Thomas Edison and William Francis Deegan.

The Cooper Union's free classes—a landmark in American history and the prototype for what is now called continuing education—have evolved into three distinguished schools that make up The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art: the School of Art, the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture and the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. Peter Cooper's dream of providing an education "equal to the best" has since become reality. Since 1859, the Cooper Union has educated thousands of artists, architects and engineers, many of them leaders in their fields.

Cooper Union's Foundation Building is an Italianate brownstone, and the first structure in New York City to feature rolled-iron I-beams for structural support; Peter Cooper himself invented and produced these beams. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961, and a New York City Landmark in 1965.